


Forgiveness And All She Has Failed

by t0talcha0s



Category: BioShock
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 16:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6016102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had done so much, yet refused to see anything but what she had yet to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgiveness And All She Has Failed

Brigid hadn't felt the sea breeze in her hair in years. It was tied up, braided strictly and draped across the back of her neck as it usually was. She took out the tie and ran her fingers through it to let it fall free around her shoulders, allowing the salt in the air to whip the brown, and more recently gray, strands wildly. Her hair was a wreck, it always was, she usually kept it braided because then she didn't have to care for it but that tended to leave it ratty and tangled. She couldn't bring herself to care as it waved in the breeze. 

It had been so long since she'd breathed in topside air. Her lungs were accustomed to breathing the stale, Rapture air and the pure freshness of the sea wind was enough to sting the inside of her chest. She reveled in the feeling. The sun was so bright, the sky was so blue, it was all so much more glorious then she had remembered. It was all too much. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply, smelling the air as she listened to the sloshing, breaking waves around her. It was a sound that was almost as novel as the first time she heard it many years ago when she first came to Rapture's lighthouse. 

A small palm closed around the fingers of her left hand and she just barely tamped down the reflex to jerk away from the contact. She opened her eyes and looked down at her little one, smiling wider then she ever had. Brigid never knew the feeling of being liberated. When the Americans occupied her camp, well, there was little kindness and happy liberation to be found for Das Wunderkind. Yes this feeling was completely original to her. 

But there are no true liberators. And she was still aware she had so much work to do, so many sins to atone for. She didn't allow herself to reveal for too longer, it would just become unnecessary. She gave the tiny hand in hers a gentle squeeze, more apologetic then loving, and stepped out of the bathysphere. It'd been so long since she had stepped foot on dry land, the sensation of standing without the twisting volatile waves of the ocean around her almost made her nauseous. 

A think, scarred hand landed gently, like a butterfly wing falling, on her right shoulder. She knew the hand well and yet she turned swiftly on her heel to face the man. He had a gentle smile on his face, the child she had built from a zygote to a killing machine in less then five years. Jack held up a piece of paper, his vocals chords ripped to shreds per her instruction. She still remembered his voice when he was very young, he addressed she and Suchong gleefully,

_"Papa Suchong! Mama Tenenbaum!"_ He had said with a joy not befitting what they had done to him. The paper he held said 

_We did it!_ It was too happy for her liking, too free of the consequence that she felt. She felt her heart, what little of it there was left, clench and tumble about her chest causing a terrible empty feeling. She sighed, she did not deserve his smile. 

"Ah my child we've still so much work we must be doing." She couldn't imagine a world without work and he only served as a constant reminder of how much work she needed to do. His handwriting was quickly scrawled but neat, just like she taught him, similar to her own.

_But we've escaped, we've saved these girls, we did it! We've done good._ She could almost laugh, the best she could provide was a half hazard scoff. 

"The only way to be describing what we've done is adequate at best." He frowned, she found his emotions played on his face without reservation, perhaps it was because he was too young to know to control them, or he simply didn't care. 

_You should rest._

"I cannot yet." There was a lapse in their communications, her not knowing what to say and he not bothering to write. She turned her attention to the girls, helping convince them that the sunlight could not hurt them, despite her own mild aversion, and that the land was safe. She was leading them out of the bathysphere when she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. 

_You are a good woman._ He, of all people, had written. Her smile in return was thin and melancholy. She wasn't good at confiding in people, she didn't plan to spill her emotions to this boy so she didn't quite know what to say. But she was struck quite heavily by his words. 

"One day, I think, I shall kneel at God's feet," she paused, as if internally reaffirming the sliver of faith she had so long and so hard held onto. "and he shall look upon me, and he shall know all that I've done, all I've brutalized, so many in the camps, the little ones, and you," she paused again, and looked at him with the same look in her eyes that she had when she first saw Rapture. "and he shall not have as kind a word to say as you." 

He began to write but she put her hand atop his. 

"No." She shook her head. "Shh, no, I cannot accept another word of your forgiveness. I deserve it not, I have failed the little ones, I have failed you," she took a deep breath, almost chuckling under her breath "Und Gott möge mir vergeben, ich habe die Stadt enttäuscht!

"Now." She said after a pause. "Our work is not done in the slightest."

**Author's Note:**

> Und Gott möge mir vergeben, ich habe die Stadt enttäuscht. - and god forgive me I have failed the city. 
> 
> My tumblr's barefootcosplayer. I hope you enjoyed a Drabble that came about from thinking about Brigid's hair.


End file.
